Tuesday, 13 April 2010

Tories Unveil Manifesto and Discover Pink Power

The news is dominated this evening by the the Tories and their weighty manifesto whilst a poll in the Times tomorrow morning puts the Tories just 3% of Labour - within the margin of error. I have to confess I've not managed to work through the Labour and Tory manifestos yet but Pink News points out that the Conservative manifesto lacks the commitment to strike out the convictions of men for historic offences - essentially those men prosecuted prior to 1967 for buggery offences. Peter Tatchell has suggested this shows gay rights were an 'afterthought'. My reaction is more - "you're not seriously surprised?".

Sunday saw Tatchell and a host of activists congregate outside Tory HQ in a flash mob in response to Chris Grayling's B&B remarks (he seems to have been in hiding since). Prior to the flash mob taking place George Osborne agreed to meet with Tatchell and they discussed 'gay rights'. Tatchell promised Osborne on gay marriage and Osborne promised to 'consider it'.

To be fair to the Tories, they also announced proposals on homophobic bullying which currently has a high profile on the front of the Conservative website. Read the full proposals here. They all seem fairly sensible to me.

The response to the Grayling slip does seem to have extracted some victories and Peter Tatchell along with all those who turned out at the weekend are to be congratulated. This election continues to be a roller coaster of excitement but the gay vote is now a high profile issue.